VICTORIA — Premier John Horgan this week launched the NDP campaign for a yes vote in the fall referendum on proportional representation, with a letter to supporters that included a confessional.

“Truth be told,” wrote Horgan, “in 2005, I voted against proportional representation. I thought pro-rep would be too complicated, too confusing.”

The referendum fell just short of the threshold for approval. In the provincial election held on the same day, Horgan was elected for the first time as a member of the NDP Opposition.

“I went to work with a lot of hope and ambition,” the now premier recounted. “But my party didn’t hold the balance of power. My fellow NDP MLAs and I fought hard against the decisions of the B.C. Liberal government, but they didn’t need our votes to pass legislation. … Proportional representation started to seem a lot less scary, a lot less complicated and a lot more democratic.”

Hence his conversion when the Liberals put proportional representation to a second referendum in 2009: “I enthusiastically marked a ‘yes’ on my ballot.”

Alas for him and other PR advocates, the electorate as a whole wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic about electoral change the second time out. The status quo system, known as first-past-the-post, was endorsed by a solid 61 per cent.

B.C. Premier John Horgan launched the NDP campaign this week for a yes vote in the fall referendum on proportional representation, with a letter to his supporters that included the fact he was once opposed to change, but is now all in.DARRYL DYCK /
THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES

Still, Horgan, re-elected to a second term in 2009, remained a fan of proportional representation. When he assumed the party leadership in 2014, he presided over a platform-building process that put PR front and centre for 2017.

“Championing electoral reform was something our party ran on in last year’s election,” he wrote this week. “It was a foundational part of our agreement with the B.C. Greens.”

The NDP leader glossed over the role of his partners in power-sharing on that score. The Greens wanted to impose PR on the province by a simple vote of the legislature. It was Horgan who insisted on putting it to a referendum.

“Proportional representation means exactly what it says,” he writes. “Whatever proportion, or share, of the vote a party wins, they get that many seats in government.”

The premier invokes one of the common slogans of the pro-PR movement, that it will make sure “every vote really counts.”

But not every vote will necessarily count toward electing a member of the legislature in the three versions of PR placed on the ballot here in B.C. by Attorney General David Eby.

Eby, who crafted the ballot in the absence of a public consensus, included a five-per-cent threshold with each option. A party would need to get at least that share of the popular vote provincewide to be sure of winning seats on the proportional side of the electoral ledger.

Horgan repeated another slogan when he wrote that under first-past-the-post, governments can win “100 per cent of the power” with less than 50 per cent of the vote.

But as any premier would know, in our system majority governments are constrained by the law, regulatory agencies, the courts, the constitution, public opinion and other levels of government.

The Trudeau government approved the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion almost two years ago. If the prime minister and his colleagues really had 100 per cent of the power, the line would be half built by now.

Horgan reminds NDP supporters of the stakes in the coming vote.

“Winning this referendum isn’t a slam dunk,” he writes. “The B.C. Liberals oppose proportional representation. They like things the way they are now because it often gets them elected.”

The B.C. Liberals are indeed campaigning for a “no” vote this time. But past opponents of PR included New Democrats like Glen Clark (“proportional representation is for losers”) Mike Harcourt (“tyranny of the minority”) and Dave Barrett (“buck passing and finger pointing would replace true representation”). Past advocates included Preston Manning and Christy Clark (“all politicians will have an incentive to get along”).

Horgan, by his own account, has taken both sides of the debate in good faith. Why could not others do the same?

Besides, the New Democrats and Greens, no less than the Liberals, have turned this referendum into a partisan battleground.

Indeed, Horgan sees a “yes” vote on proportional representation as the first step in re-electing the NDP-Green partnership to a second term in the election scheduled for three years hence.

“The 57 per cent of British Columbians that voted NDP or Green deserve a government that puts people first,” he writes. “Last spring, you joined me in helping to bring power back to the people of B.C., and to make government work for people again. This fall, join me in making sure it stays that way.”

That, too, is a commonplace assumption of PR advocates. They take it as an article of faith that under proportional representation, more than half of the electorate would vote NDP or Green, election in, election out.

But B.C. voters have been known to shift their preferences from time to time. It also seems likely that the B.C. Liberals will split into two parties. But in many provincial elections, the combined popular vote has been greater for parties of the centre right, a possibility that seems not to have occurred to the premier and his supporters.

Electoral reform as a surefire re-election ticket for the New Democrats and Greens? Of all the claims being made in favour of proportional representation, that may be the most misleading of all.

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